Police Raid Home of Possible Bitcoin Creator Craig Wright

The Guardian and Reutersare reporting that police have raided the home of Craig Wright, an Australian CEO who was identified in investigations by Gizmodo and Wired as a likely candidate for the secret identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive creator of Bitcoin.

Hours after the publication of the stories, more than 10 law enforcement officers arrived at Wright’s home in the Sydney suburbs, some wearing white gloves and apparently searching the house’s cupboard and garage, according to the Guardian. The paper writes that the search is apparently unconnected to the creation of Bitcoin, and instead relates to an investigation of the Australian Taxation Office.

A police officer similarly told Reuters reporters that the raid was “not associated with the media reporting overnight about bitcoins,” and said that the officers on the scene were “clearing the house.”

Documents that were provided to Gizmodo, many of which were corroborated by interviews, show Wright claiming to have played a role in the invention of the cryptocurrency. The documents also seem to indicate that Dave Kleiman, an American computer forensics expert who died in 2013, was involved as well.

One of those documents is an apparent transcript of a meeting between Wright and his associates and the ATO about the regulation of Bitcoin for tax purposes in Australia. At one point in that transcript, Wright is quoted as saying “I did my best to hide that I’ve been running bitcoin since 2009 but...by the end of this I think half the world is going to bloody know.” It is unclear whether that meeting is connected to today’s raid.